


three am and a dash of kale

by enemeriad



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Basically Bucky recovery fic, Gen, Hijinks, This may be smut later who knows
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:07:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5080603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemeriad/pseuds/enemeriad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Living in Avengers Tower has perks - lots of them. Unmetered car parking in New York, daily fresh bagels that didn't cost an arm and the occasional subway delay update ahead any serious apocalyptic situation. It's great. </p><p>But getting some sleep?</p><p>It doesn't come cheap.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three am and a dash of kale

Darcy gets all the way up to 147 sheep before she huffs, whips her duvet away from her and stalks out of her bedroom. Living in Avengers tower was a fucking nightmare. Tony Stark didn't understand personal boundaries and something as previously mundane like a date required a blood work up and a criminal history check before she was given permission to leave the tower. 

And most nights? 

It was a flurry of activity. She could hear the clanking of someone in the communal kitchen, the floor she'd had the incredible misfortune of getting lumped on after she'd complained about being too far away from it to stay on Jane's floor. Whatever. Priorities. She groaned petulantly and shuffled out into the living area, bleary eyed against the onslaught of light, swearing under her breath like a sailor. 

'—uh the fuck are you making this much noise at 3 am for?' Darcy asks the crime against nature that has just pulled a blender out of the cupboard. 

Barton gives her a shit-eating grin and literally, literally winks at her like this is normal behaviour. 

'Is that— oh man, are you eating kale?' Darcy asks, alarmed and disturbed that someone would willingly wake from something as rarefied in this god forsaken tower as sleep to make themselves a gunky smoothie from vegetables. 

Clint puts a hand to his ear over the din of the blender, pretending not to hear her and Darcy flips him the bird. 

'I hope Loki comes back to life and eats you,' she mutters and trudges despondently back to her bedroom. 

 

 

She's sulking as she stares at the bed, door closed, a sheet pushed under the crack of the door and she can still hear Clint clattering away, now with accompaniment. She thinks Tony is probably trying to barter Clint for some insight into Natasha and his thing. Good fucking luck. Darcy even tried batting her eyelashes and nothing. 

It's not like there is a chance in hell of getting to sleep while Clint has decide to orchestrate a symphony of kitchen appliances to do his evil bidding, so she grabs her doona, lumps it over her head and drags her pillow out of the room. 

'Lewis,' Clint says, turning off the blender to whistle at her, 'you've never looked this good.'

'Eat shit and die, Barton,' she mumbles under her moveable doona-fort and gets into the lift dreaming up ways to kill him in his sleep, should he have the luxury of ever getting it. 

 

 

'Miss Lewis, if I may interrupt,' JARVIS starts, and she peers out from her duvet into the nether at the omniscient interface. 

'Whaddaya want? Is Jane dead or dying? Because if so, I don't want to hear about it until like.. 3 o'clock tomorrow.'

She can swear the A.I is laughing at her when he says, 'were you looking for somewhere to sleep tonight, Miss Lewis?'

She eyes the elevators steadily decreasing floor numbers and then looks vaguely above her at where she probably thinks maybe JARVIS' voice is coming from. 

'Where're you takin' me? Am I gunna die? Does this involve pranking or fire because I just, I just can't tonight.'

The doors open onto a furnished floor, everything snazzy and ritzy and, 'is this Natasha's place, because nuh-uh buddy, I want to sleep not die for like invading her bubble or whatever.' She shuffles the duvet into her arms from her head, and peers into the shadowy room.

JARVIS cool and smarmy, the jerk, informs her there is a bed and that she is welcome to it as 'Agent Romanoff does not frequent this floor, anymore. This floor is currently under renovation but the couch is, I am told, well-equipped for sleeping.'

'Knew they were dating,' Darcy mutters triumphantly, before thanking (is she supposed to do that? It still feels weird,) JARVIS and stumbling out into the living room. The configuration is much like Jane's floor. Opens up onto a living room with two doors and a corridor to the left. One bathroom, one laundry and the bedroom/s down the hall. There's a few tile samples propped up against the wall and Darcy manages to trip over a paint pot and when she hauls herself and the duvet up, she pouts at it. 

She glares at the drop sheets over the nice comfy couch, imagining herself a li'l baby koala wrapped in a synthetic down eucalyptus leaf (was that how koala's slept? who knew). How nice it would be to be allowed to sleep undisturbed for 23 hours. She'd never been such a stickler for her sleep, not one of those people that actually needed more than 8 hours because wow, excuse, the nightlife to be had was seriously kicking (but mainly she just had to keep up with Jane), but Avengers tower was sapping her of her life blood. She was going to become mopey and shitty and just generally all old-timey if they kept this up. 

So she hauls ass, pulls the sheet off, hunching the duvet over her and falls asleep under her igloo bed to the lack of Clinton Barton playing celebrity chef. 

 

 

Okay, it's not that Darcy isn't an extremely capable, assertive, independent, awesome, sassy (she could go on, and on and on) young woman but that doesn't mean the sight of a fully grown man assassin lying on a bed that she had definitely thought was unoccupied doesn't make her want to scream like a god damn banshee. 

'WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE? IS THAT A KNIFE? OH GOD. WHAT. STOP. WHY IS IT- WHY ARE YOU. STOP BRANDISHING THAT YOU MORON. ITS ME. ITS ME. PUT IT DOWN! ITS DAR-CEE,' is her thought process. What comes out however, is a small yelp and a leap back. She's got this whole tactical strategy down pat. If someone comes at you with a knife, flail internally and then take a step back like the half foot greater distance might somehow physically impair them in their attempt to maim you. 

Genius. 

Except you know, her literal burrito is a slight impediment to movement and she ends up crumpled on the floor blowing her fringe out of her eyes and staring up at her attacker, still handling a knife like it’s another appendage and yet looking at her with a blank expression that is stark contrast to the conflict posturing.

The first words out of Cousin It's mouth are you know, actual words, and not venom like she'd been told (imagined). ' _My_ bed.'

Darcy frowns, and stupidly, relaxes. 'Oh.’ And she notices the small pile of folded clothes and alarm clock in the otherwise empty studio. ‘Dude. I'm sorry. Like. I am functioning on less than two hours sleep. So.'

He just blinks as if this does not compute. 

'Aren't you like a super villain? How did you not hear me come in?'

'I heard you.'

Darcy blinks, tenses and leans back – for all the protection that offered in her pillow armour. 'That’s some fucking creepo shit right there, buddy.'

The man tilts his head but makes no other movements, hovering as he is on the other side of the bed. And while Darcy can definitely class him in the 'probably already planning how to kill me quietly' category of humans, he's still not the worst person she's been stuck in an enclosed space (jfc, Jeff, her college boyfriend was a _gerbil_ killer. He definitely took the cherry.) And he's definitely not the worst looking if he managed to you know, shower and observe general rules of social etiquette. Just basic, basic things like not glaring at innocent young maidens.

'Yes.'

Darcy splutters. 'Why didn't you wake me?'

He frowns. 'I didn't know.'

Her suspiciousness is something harvested from all the weird shit she has to deal with on a daily basis, but she’s not an idiot.

‘Wait, did you get in here without JARVIS knowing?'

He reciprocates the frown, and from what she can see of his face, he looks confused. 

She simplified for the old-timer. 'You know. The talky British butler computer thingy.’ 

The Winter Soldier, (full caps, uh-huh, for you know, drama) gives her a disgruntled puff of air in reply. 'I disabled the sensors. He was noisy.'

Darcy bemoans the security systems of a building with a bunch of high-profile, probably wanted dead by lots of badies that doesn't have some sort of fail-safe if an ex-Russian spy decides he doesn't like how chatty the interface is being. 

'Cool,' she replies, thinking not cool not cool not cool. 

He gives her a slight head tilt in acknowledgement and then after a beat extends his arm, (the non-weaponised one, ya huh, he was learning) to offer her a hand up? She pouts a bit because chivalry, in this day and age, was hard to decline but then he also had the knife pressed flat against his thumb so yeah - perhaps a rain check?

'Mmh,' she hums, 'is the blade still necessary?'

The protracted registering of the object in his hand spooks her - he actually peers down at his palm as if the hand itself was a foreign object and then back at her before orchestrating some sort of ninja move that renders the object gone. 

'Right,' he replies and then lowers his hand, 'no blade.'

She takes the hand, gingerly and blinks a little because it's not rough but smooth and strong and does he wear gloves? She thinks he wears gloves - or the Winter Soldier wore gloves, that part is confusing what with Steve talking about the murderer as a separate entity which while comforting in the context of the non-murderering alter-ego moving in, is less so when confronted with the personalities in the same morning but she's on her feet and he's inches from her face and he just kind of breathes out. 

'Sorry,' he says as Darcy extricates her hand. 

She's standing in the pool of her duvet and wearing less than appropriate 'I'd turn for Tasha' pajamas with booty shorts in such a short distance from the Winter Soldier she'd felt his breath on her eyelashes and his face actually looks human at this distance. In fact, it almost looks ashamed. 

'Oh.'

She realises he has blue eyes - and they're fixated on her. 'Oh,' she starts again and then, 'it's okay.'

Which it really, really isn't but she's not about to argue because from this angle - she can see the blade twirling between the fingers of his mechanical arm. So she decides the only course of action is to /gquit as soon as possible and get the hell out of dodge. 

'I promise it won't happen again,' she stutters out and then offers up a easy breezy cool-girl smile before running out of there like there with the same velocity she usually reserved for her morning coffee run and shot-gunning the sofa. No urgency. Real casual stuff in the face of a crazed killer. 

Yeah. 

Nice. 


End file.
